Recycling Wharfedale drive units
 

I'm in the process of retiring my Wharfedale speakers of 1970 vintage and
was wondering about demoting them to a pair of super PC speakers. One of the
bass drivers is shot and so the other may not be far behind. My idea is to
put the mid range and treble units into smaller enclosures that would fit on
my desk and to build a reasonable enclosure for the remaining bass unit (or
a replacement) to go somewhere else in the room.

OK, I know we are not talking hifi here but would this give me reasonable
results ?

My only doubt is how to drive the units. Can I use the existing three-way
crossover networks somehow ? How could I combine the bass outputs to drive
the single unit ?

Am I barking mad or does my idea sound reasonable ?

Jo

Recycling Wharfedale drive units
 

Jo,

I think it would be worth seeing how much it would cost to repair the
bass drivers before you do anything else.

Although there are any number of people who could do the job, I would
contact Castle Acoustics in Skipton first.

HTH

Paul

Jo wrote:
I'm in the process of retiring my Wharfedale speakers of 1970 vintage and
was wondering about demoting them to a pair of super PC speakers. One of the
bass drivers is shot and so the other may not be far behind. My idea is to
put the mid range and treble units into smaller enclosures that would fit on
my desk and to build a reasonable enclosure for the remaining bass unit (or
a replacement) to go somewhere else in the room.

OK, I know we are not talking hifi here but would this give me reasonable
results ?

My only doubt is how to drive the units. Can I use the existing three-way
crossover networks somehow ? How could I combine the bass outputs to drive
the single unit ?

Am I barking mad or does my idea sound reasonable ?

Jo

Recycling Wharfedale drive units
 

Thanks Paul,

I used a birthday gift owing to me to buy some new speakers (IPL S5TL Domes)
so the Wharfedales are "spare". I will look into repairs, then I could sell
them as a fully working item, I suppose. I already contacted a few repair
outfits but they couldn't find matching suspension or cones for these lovely
big cast frame 12 inch units.

Jo

In oups.com,
typed:
Jo,

I think it would be worth seeing how much it would cost to repair the
bass drivers before you do anything else.

Although there are any number of people who could do the job, I would
contact Castle Acoustics in Skipton first.

HTH

Paul

Jo wrote:
I'm in the process of retiring my Wharfedale speakers of 1970
vintage and was wondering about demoting them to a pair of super PC
speakers. One of the bass drivers is shot and so the other may not
be far behind. My idea is to put the mid range and treble units into
smaller enclosures that would fit on my desk and to build a
reasonable enclosure for the remaining bass unit (or a replacement)
to go somewhere else in the room.

OK, I know we are not talking hifi here but would this give me
reasonable results ?

My only doubt is how to drive the units. Can I use the existing
three-way crossover networks somehow ? How could I combine the bass
outputs to drive the single unit ?

Am I barking mad or does my idea sound reasonable ?

Jo

Recycling Wharfedale drive units
 

Jo wrote:
Thanks Paul,

I used a birthday gift owing to me to buy some new speakers (IPL S5TL Domes)
so the Wharfedales are "spare". I will look into repairs, then I could sell
them as a fully working item, I suppose. I already contacted a few repair
outfits but they couldn't find matching suspension or cones for these lovely
big cast frame 12 inch units.

Jo

Maybe in the spirit of DIY, you could do the repair operation yourself?
I placed "repairing speaker surrounds" into google and got a few hits
for DIY kits?

--
Adrian C

Recycling Wharfedale drive units
 

In ,
Adrian C typed:
Jo wrote:
Thanks Paul,

I used a birthday gift owing to me to buy some new speakers (IPL
S5TL Domes) so the Wharfedales are "spare". I will look into
repairs, then I could sell them as a fully working item, I suppose.
I already contacted a few repair outfits but they couldn't find
matching suspension or cones for these lovely big cast frame 12 inch
units. Jo

Maybe in the spirit of DIY, you could do the repair operation
yourself? I placed "repairing speaker surrounds" into google and got
a few hits for DIY kits?

I'm focussed on finishing my new speakers right now (first sounds
tonight...wow!) but I did some Googling when the Wharfedale driver first
broke and found several places selling DIY butyl rubber surround kits.
Problem was none of them had the correct dimension for the speaker cone OD.
I'll do some more checking before I commit to anything with it.

That said, the very first item using your search terms was a place I hadn't
checked so I'll bookmark it for later. Thanks.

Jo